


Make It Happen

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Read My Lips [38]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6518650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Any, Any, The futility of arguing with a child (who just might be smarter than you)</i>. Jonathan is no match for Evan's nephew Mikey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make It Happen

“You should be where Uncle Evan is,” Mikey said one day, apropos to nothing. He was ‘helping’ Jonathan plant seeds. Jonathan dug the hole, Mikey counted out three seeds, and Jonathan dropped them into the hole, then smoothed it over with his trowel.  
  
“What makes you say that?” Jonathan kept a neutral expression on his face. As a young soldier who’d grown up hearing his father’s bitterness about fighting in Korea and Vietnam, he’d always been leery of hippies and their opinion that soldiers were baby-killers, but here, among the peaceful orchards and garden plots where Evan Lorne had grown up, Jonathan could see why people would choose this life. Mikey and Gabby were sweet kids, and here they got to grow up without a lot of the ugliness of the busier world.  
  
“You miss him.” Mikey handed Jonathan the seeds, and Jonathan dropped them into the hole, smoothed soil over them with his trowel.  
  
“We’ve only met a few times,” Jonathan pointed out. It was true. In this body, this incarnation, he’d met Evan Lorne all of twice so far - that first time when he was wandering the pier and looking at the booths and perhaps considering flinging himself off said pier, and that second time, when Evan came home on leave.  
  
“For you a few times was all it took.” Mikey followed Jonathan as they shuffled down the row. While Jonathan dug, Mikey counted out the seeds into delicate little trios on his palm.  
  
“You think so?”  
  
“You write him letters every week, and every week he sends you letters in his emails.”  
  
“He’s just being nice. Those are postscripts. He sends longer messages to you and Gabby.”  
  
“You and Uncle Evan have a Deeper Connection,” Mikey said sagely, and Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “You don’t need very many words, do you?”  
  
Jonathan thought of the last postscript he’d gotten from Evan. _Take a chance. You’ve got great odds._ “Well, I need a lot of words.”  
  
“But Uncle Evan doesn’t. Not for you. So you should go be where he is.”  
  
“It’s not that simple,” Jonathan said. “Uncle Evan’s very far away, and his mission is very classified, and for me to just go there is impossible.”  
  
“It’s impossible if you have that kind of attitude,” Mikey said, and for one moment he sounded so much like Nana that Jonathan had to smile.  
  
“Besides, there are other rules, about Uncle Evan being a soldier.”  
  
“They’re stupid rules, and they’ll change one day,” Mikey said. “You should be with him when they do change. It’ll make things easier.” He handed Jonathan a trio of seeds.  
  
Jonathan planted them absently. “I don’t think it would be very fair to either of us, for me to hang around till the rules have changed.”  
  
“So you do want to hang around him.” Mikey’s gaze was sly.  
  
Jonathan had forgotten children’s logic, how they could be impossibly smart at the worst moments. Mikey looked nothing like Charlie, was dark-haired like all the Lorne children were, but sometimes the gleam in his eye was dangerously familiar.  
  
“What I want doesn’t matter.” He’d learned that early on. As a soldier and an officer, what he wanted had to come secondary to the mission objectives.  
  
“That’s stupid.”  
  
“That’s the way of soldiers.”  
  
“You’re not a soldier.”  
  
“Not anymore.”  
  
“Then go be a soldier again.”  
  
The thought of going back to basic training and slogging through all of it, when he had zero chance of becoming an officer this time around, not without some kind of higher education, was horrifying. Like when he’d really stopped to think about it, the thought of going back to high school was horrifying. In physical years Evan was too old for him, almost two decades his senior. In actual years, mental years, Evan was too young for him, almost two decades his junior.  
  
Jonathan was pretty sure Evan was perfect for him.  
  
“No. I can’t be a soldier again.”  
  
“Then what would you have to do, to go where Uncle Evan is?”  
  
“I’d have to be a genius at, well, something. And I’m not stupid, but I’m not a genius at anything.” Jonathan shook his head. He’d played dumber than he was all the time, if only so his subordinates and enemies thought he was predictable, so he had the element of surprise when he needed it.

“You have to be smart at something. Everyone’s smart at something,” Mikey said, and he sounded so sure of his view of the world that Jonathan didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise. But he’d worked with a lot of greenhorn airmen and marines to know that wasn’t quite true. Maybe everyone was smart at something, but not everyone was smart at something that was useful in war.  
  
“I was all right at aerospace engineering,” Jonathan said. He’d gone to the Air Force Academy for aerospace engineering in another life. Most people didn’t know that, and the few who did were probably dead.  
  
“Could you do it again?”  
  
The advances in aerospace engineering, especially with all of the alien tech coming out of the SGC, were probably beyond him. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You won’t know till you try.” That right there was straight from Nana’s lips. Mikey inflected it the same way she did.  
  
They reached the end of the row and carefully shuffled their tools and seeds to the next row. Jonathan’s knees twinged a little, but weren't hurting too badly. That was one part of being young again that he didn’t mind. He was careful to treat his body better this time around, though. He knew what one bad hockey spill would feel like years down the road.  
  
“Uncle Jonathan,” Mikey said solemnly, “if you don’t go to where Uncle Evan is, you’re an idiot, and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”  
  
Jonathan squinted at him. “How old are you, kid?”  
  
“Ten. How old are you?”  
  
“That’s a complicated question.”  
  
“Nana says you’re an old soul.”  
  
“Nana’s a wise woman.”  
  
“Nana thinks you should go to where Uncle Evan is.”  
  
“Now you’re just being a smart-aleck.”  
  
“Grandma and Mama and Gabby all think you should be where Uncle Evan is.”  
  
“That’s a logical fallacy, kiddo. _Ad populum_. Just because everyone says something is right doesn’t mean it actually is.”  
  
“It’s not a fallacy if they _are_ right.”  
  
Jonathan couldn’t remember the last time he’d so thoroughly lost a battle, and he’d once spent time in a Goa’uld cell being tortured, killed, and resurrected multiple times.  
  
Mikey handed him three seeds and smiled sweetly.  
  
The next day, Jonathan asked Bobbie if he could borrow her truck. Cal Tech had an aerospace engineering program, and since Jonathan had technically been emancipated out of foster care after being orphaned, he had some financial aid options not available to kids who’d come from more advantageous circumstances. He needed to get his legend in order if he wanted this to happen.  
  
And he wanted this to happen.


End file.
